Good afternoon, CHP listeners all over the world.

Laoslemont Gummary here bringing you another China History Podcast episode.

Now some of you saw the episode title in your podcast feed of Ida Khan and Mary Stone.

And we're probably thinking, hmm, Laoslem's talking about Ashkenazi Jews again.

But Ida Khan and Mary Stone, they were both Chinese, born in Jochang, Jiangxi Province, in 1873.

And the Chinese names were Kangcheng and Shimei Yut.

Though both of them are hardly remembered today, in their day, first few decades of the 20th century,

they were very well known and quite celebrated, both in China and here in America.

The president of China once made a marriage proposal to Ida.

They were like a lot of figures from Chinese history,

who stars one shine so bright, only to fade and get lost over the years.

I was working on the final episode in that recent history of Guangzhou series.

And I was reading John Pomford's fantastic book, The Beautiful Country in the Middle Kingdom,

and stumbled on to Ida and Mary's story.

And after stopping everything I was doing, I began digging a little and thought,

what a great topic, two women who did what they did?

How can I resist?

So this is the story of Kangcheng and Shimei Yut.

If no one has any violent objections, I'll refer to both of them throughout this episode

by their English and Chinese names.

This is a story that mostly takes place in Jiangxi Province,

in a place that doesn't enjoy the cashier prestige as some of the better-known coastal provinces,

...